


John Watson's Guide to Eavesdropping for Fun and Profit

by thepurplewombat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Fluff and Crack, Friends to Lovers, In which John is a bit lala, John is a nosy parker, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mycroft and Sherlock talk about feelings, Mycroft is terribly cunning, Mycroft: Master of the Cunning Plan, Pining John, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, but in a nice way, he's also so nosy, overheard love confession, so so very nosy, unironic use of the phrase 'alluring toes', woof bloody woof arsehole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 07:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10239458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: In which John is nosy, Mycroft is cunning, and Sherlock is a girl's name.





	

I come to a stop on the thirteenth step to 221B. Sherlock is having an argument with someone and although I’d love to be able to pretend that I’m giving my friend some privacy, I’m really not. It’s just that steps fourteen through seventeen squeak abominably and unpredictably, and I’ve always been a bit of a nosy parker. I know this about myself, and I’ve accepted it. So step thirteen is the best place to stand, if I want to…okay, if you’re going to be like that, _eavesdrop_. Such a nasty little word, but on the other hand, I’ve found out some fairly interesting things through eavesdropping over the years, and it’s not like Sherlock’s never-

“You should tell him,” comes Mycroft voice, light and certain through the open door.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mycroft,” Sherlock says, and this is definitely not the way he usually talks to Mycroft. He sounds tired, despairing. Definitely not how he usually talks to his brother. From the sounds of it, he’s got his face in the couch again, and my mind helpfully supplies details – probably wearing his gown, curled up on the couch, bare toes wriggling sulkily at the universe (and I’ve certainly never thought about kissing those ridiculous monkey toes, about reducing Sherlock to a babbling wreck by sucking on them one by one, and…okay, maybe I have thought about it. Once or twice. A week. Since we met. It’s definitely not my fault though – if people are going to go around having alluring toes, then other people are allowed to have…thoughts about them. I’m pretty sure it’s in the rules.) “It’s not that easy.”

Mycroft scoffs. He’s a champion scoffer, that one, could scoff for England.

“It’s exactly that easy, brother mine,” he says. “The next time you see him, just…open your mouth and let the words come out. You never usually have a problem with letting words come out, I’ve always found the difficulty to lie in rather the opposite direction.”

“Oh, yes, and that went so well last time,” Sherlock groans. His voice is muffled – probably he’s trying to dig his way through to the back of the sofa with his face again. “It was _ridiculous_ and _humiliating_ , and don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Hmm, indeed,” Mycroft says, and I can hear the little smirk in his voice. My fist begins to itch. It’s Pavlovian at this point – hear Mycroft smirking, want to punch Mycroft in his pointy face. Woof bloody woof, arsehole. “Sherlock is actually a girl’s name? That was the best you could come up with?”

Sherlock growls and there’s a sound – possibly he’s thrown a pillow. So, they’re talking about me then, unless Sherlock is in the habit of going around telling people that he has a girl’s name. Which I wouldn’t put past him, it’d be mad enough, but I doubt it. It makes me feel better about the eavesdropping. Not that I was feeling guilty about it before, you understand…oh, shut up. And stop looking at me like that, you’re a skull, what do you know.

“I had no idea you even still knew that,” Mycroft muses. “I thought you’d deleted it. Like sex, and the solar system.”

“If I could delete anything about you, Mycroft, I would have deleted you entirely,” Sherlock snaps.

Mycroft sighs. His put-upon sighs are also an experience, it’s like the concentrated frustration of a thousand frustrated mothers, all condensed into one gust of hot air. And now I can hear him sitting down. Is he sitting in- he is! The bloody tit is sitting in _my_ chair!

“You need to tell him, Sherlock. This…manly pining…thing you are doing, it’s not healthy.”

 _Manly pining_? Who is Sherlock _pining_ for? I’m almost overcome by the urge to march in there and shake Sherlock until a name falls out, and then find whoever he has been pining for and drag them back to 221B, in chains if need be. Or leave them on his doorstep wrapped in a red ribbon, like a cat, except I’d probably not disembowel them first. I could bring Sherlock presents, if I was a cat. Dead mice and so on, he’d probably like that. He’d do experiments on them.

“It’d be a disaster,” Sherlock mutters.

“It might not be,” Mycroft says.

“Oh right, let’s try for hope shall we?” Sherlock says. “What do you want me to do, Mycroft? Walk up to him one day and say “John, I’m really rather desperately in love with you? I’m afraid I’ve deleted most of what I knew about sex except for what’s useful for cases but I think I’d quite like to lick you all over? I want to run experiments to compare the taste of your mouth after every meal, and when you glare at me I want to go on my knees for you? I want to wake up next to you and go to sleep next to you and watch crap telly and drink bad wine, and I want to learn dead languages so I can tell you how much I love you because no language currently existing has the words for it?” Should I tell him that his hands make me come over all wobbly and that when the world gets too loud I want to hide my face in his jumpers because I’m not sure why but I think it might help? Is _that_ what you want me to tell John Watson?”

My brain is blank. Completely and utterly blank. _Me?_ I…what? Me? Sherlock’s been…oh, god, I can’t even think the word.

I realise that I’ve pushed open the door. I don’t remember climbing the rest of the stairs. Mycroft is standing, smiling at me. Sherlock is a rigid line on the sofa, trembling with…fear? Horror?

“There, brother mine, was that so hard?” Mycroft says.

“Piss off, Mycroft,” I snap. He pats my shoulder as he passes me, and I resist the urge to break his fingers. I have to think quickly now, because if I let Sherlock come to the wrong conclusion, I’ll probably never see him again. The door clicks closed behind Mycroft, and I take a breath.

What the hell.

Thinking is overrated.

“So I was standing outside just now, and I was thinking,” I say. “I was thinking I’d like to find the person you were pining for and leave them on your doorstep or your pillow like a cat, except probably I wouldn’t disembowel them first. I mean, I can’t promise anything, because honestly the thought of you pining for someone else has me seeing red, just a bit. And then I started thinking how nice it would be if I was a cat, because I could bring you dead mice to experiment on, which I think you’d like.”

Sherlock is staring at me over his own shoulder, looking absolutely bewildered.

“John-“

“And if you think that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve thought about in relation to you, Sherlock, you need to have another think,” I say, and I’m taking off my jumper and my shirt and my shoes. “Two minutes before that I was having thoughts about doing obscene things to your toes, because they’re ridiculous and every time I see them my mouth begins to water. And when you come over all clever I have to tell you, Sherlock, it does _things_ to me.”

Sherlock is sitting up now, looking…well, a bit shocked, but that’s to be expected when one moment you’re talking to your brother about feelings and the next you’ve got an army doctor in his forties stripping naked and plopping himself in your lap.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Sherlock, is that I’m rather desperately in love with you too, and I haven’t deleted anything about sex and I can tell you that you’re pretty much spot-on with the licking thing.” Sherlock’s hands come up and touch my back, my shoulders, and I shudder, my eyes wanting to close. I lean closer, my lips millimetres from his. “I had fish and chips for lunch, Sherlock,” I say. “Come experiment on me.”


End file.
